LOFTY'S LEGENDS: THE LEGEND of MY SISTER JAYLO Part III

 

HOW AN 'OLD BOMB' SAVED MY SISTER'S LIFE . .  

Jaylo and her Buang granddaughter Apple say Hi. 

Part 3 - THE FINAL FLIGHT of LITTLE EAGLE WITHOUT JAYLO

The little eagle sped down the Nadzab runway in Morobe and lifted off.

With a wiggle of the wing tips,  the pilots signalled everything was okay, going according to plan.

The cops on the tarmac, just like every other day the eagle came by, stood, watched and waited until the little plane was a speck in the distance.

Unknown to the cops, ominous clouds were rolling in from the south,  from the precipitationin the Gulf of Papua.

On-board were the two pilots and two escort cops. The money had been delivered to the PNGBC branches in Lae and Bulolo.

Two more centres to cover and they would be homeward bound. The mood was light. Little Eagle had a few mountains to leapfrog.

The two pilots were relatively new to the Gulf area of operations. Their destination was Kerema and then onto Daru. 

Little Eagle punched into the dark ominous clouds. Her engine groaned and shuddered  as she lifted her nose higher.

Light rain splashed across her wings. Day was turned into darkness.

The pilots checked their instruments. They could not see in the storm. Either they turned around now or continued on.

As fate would have it, little eagle pounded on in the rough, like a bucking bronco, buffeted by the strong air currents.

Jaylo and her reserve police friends.

There was tension in the air and in the plane. 

Somewhere over the Kaintiba mountains  the pilots made a final decision, the consequences of which was to be life defining.

Believing they had cleared the mountain pass, they lowered their nose for Kerema.

It was 2pm, Jaylo was on her way to downtown Port Moresby for her afternoon shift at the PNGBC security division. 

She was moody, she had missed an important part of her duty - escorting the money plane for the day.

Lost in deep thought, she didn't realise her cop beret flying through the air at the Koki roundabout as a strong gust of wind blew in from Wanigela village.

It was around 2pm she recalls. She stopped the car and ran over to retrieve her uniform beret.

But before she did, a taxi ran over and squashed her helmet. Bugger, she didn't think much of it as she dusted it off.

Jaylo (left) and her daughter Liz, mummy for Apple, dolled up as Sesame Street characters. 

Back on board and off to PNGBC, she arrived in time to find the security office in a frantic bedlam.

The security officers were desperately trying to raise the pilots on their money plane.

The eagle had vanished. No may day, no pay day, no sign of little eagle. Silence.

All scenarios were playing through the minds of the bank security and management. 

They were worried, little eagle had missed Kerema, or did she encounter some wild weather and turn back?

The nearby Kaintiba airstrip was long enough for Little Eagle to skein emergency landing.

But communications to such remote locations is only possible through two way radio.

Jaylo was shocked, bewildered as the time ticked by with no word from the pilots.

Finally, 4pm local kerema time, word filtered down from the misty mountains.

A local high school teacher had been alerted to a light plane crash in the vicinity of Kaintiba.

The bank radioed back for identification. Sadly it was little eagle. And sadly there were no survivors.

The time of crash - 2pm - shocked Jaylo. Was it a coincidence that a taxi had crushed her cop beret at exactly the same hour at the Koki roundabout?

Jaylo and her driver mates waiting offshore at Motupore Research Island.

Jaylo was all sweaty. She felt lightheaded. She asked to be dropped back home at Garden Hills.

Had her car AFX started that morning, Jaylo thought to herself. 

Tears streamed down her eyes.

She would have been on that fateful plane. She hugged her sons and cried.

Then she thought of the two cops who had died in the crash along with the two expatriate pilots.

They had families too. She thought of the wives and children who would be mourning the loss of their daddies.

It was an extremely gut wrenching feeling. Tears flowed freely. 

Next day the bank dispatched a recovery team. Little Eagle was a mangled wreck. 

The plane had struck a tree and impacted a mountainside.

It was a painful messy recovery exercise. Body parts were everywhere. No-one stood any chance of survival.

The local people were the first to reach the scene. There on the rocky tree covered hillside, money was everywhere, free money.

Kina and toea for the PNGBC Kerema and Daru branches were lying everywhere on a Kaintiba mountainside.

But this are bush people who have very little access to currency. It was of little value to them.

They collected it and handed it back to the bank police. Nobody knows how much was collected. 

Painfully, the recovery team gathered body parts into 4 body bags.

One bag had just the head of a pilot. His body was so broken up it was hard to identify.

It was gruesome. I thought of my sister Jaylo.

Our mother was still alive. How would mummy dearest have taken the news had Jaylo suffered the same fate?

The Kamea people of Kaintiba. Picture courtesy of JIM TAPARU.

Eventually the body parts were returned to the grieving families.

The trauma and nightmares were too much for Jaylo. Even a break from work was not enough. 

She eventually quit. Last month Jaylo celebrated her 61 birthday with her grandkids.

Had she being on little eagle, she would have never made it to her 61st and enjoyed the joy of having grandkids.

She says we all live once. No-one knows the day and hour of our reckoning.

Only God Almighty knows. That day was not my day,  she says. My car AFX did not start for a reason. 

Jaylo now works for the Jubilee Catholic Secondary School in Port Moresby as secretary, bursar, driver, cleaner, jack of all trades. 

At one time she worked with the Bomana Sacred Heart Teachers College.

One day Lofty was trudging through the bush at Strickland River in Western Province.

Lofty stopped at a village school where a young teacher, bored by the loneliness of the countryside, was happy to welcome a new city boy to his hamlet. 

In between cups of hot tea and the single countryside life he lived, he implored, 'paps,  you look like someone I know?'

Lofty replied: 'which college did you graduate from?' 'Bomana,' he said proudly. 

'Aaaah there you go. My sister Jaylo works there.'

Gulf regional candidate Jim Taparu on the campaign trail in the mountains of the Kamea. Not far from here, the money plane crashed sometimes in 1997. Picture courtesy of Team JIM TAPARU.

'Yes,' he said, 'mums Jaylo. She always drove the big bus and took us to the countryside schools for our practical experience.' 

Had Jaylo taken that plane ride many years ago, this young man would have never met my sister.

I thank you God Almighty for sparing my sister Jaylo.

Jaylo was meant to be a teacher but our dad, an old time teacher, discouraged her. 

Instead she completed year six at Porebada Primary School, went to Badihagwa high school and furthered her education at the Pom Secretarial College, now Pom Business College.

Her first job was as an office secretary at the the Foreign Affairs office in Waigani. It was there that she took me on my first ever lift ride up to the 4th flour. It was scary, Lofty's eyes were shut going up and wide open coming down.

She is also one of few women operators of coach type buses in Port Moresby. 

She was official driver of the Chilean delegation at the APEC convention in Port Moresby.

And that's the story of Jaylo's near miss with a plane crash. 

* dedicated to the memory of the two pilots and the two police officers who lost their lives.